Disinformation and the tyranny of officialdom

Tony Abbott meeting Australian troops at Exercise Talisman Soldier in 2015 [Public Domain]

Tony Abbott recently warned us that ‘conservatives must resist [the] tyranny of officialdom’.

This proved timely, as I’ve just experienced unelected and anonymous bureaucrats at the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) publicly endorsing the view that my political opinion constituted ‘disinformation’.

After I urged conservative voters not to splinter the conservative vote at the coming election, the AEC endorsed the labelling of my political opinion as "disinformation" even though what I had to say was not according to their own definition... This is my response.

Writing in the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes had this to say:

As he writes, Michael de Percy is a political scientist. Electoral systems are his business. He made a public statement of the bleeding obvious: because Labor benefits more from Greens and other Left preferences, the higher the Coalition’s primary vote means the better Peter Dutton’s chance of rolling Anthony Albanese. Determined to protect the myth that all preferences matter, the Australian Electoral Commission accused our resident Bearded Wonder of political disinformation. There is something very wrong when unelected officials themselves spout disinformation to ‘combat’ what they deem misinformation – and we dodged a huge bullet late last year, when legislation to entrench such madness was voted down in the Senate.

Meanwhile, writing in the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

How much power should the AEC have over the conversation? At some point they elected themselves as Australia’s digital police, suffocating Twitter and Facebook with their ‘disinformation’ labels. Well, Michael de Percy isn’t very happy with them, referring to the ‘tyranny of officialdom’.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Disinformation and the tyranny of officialdom.